The early 1990s was a turbulent era for Montreal’s LGBTQ+ community, ravaged by HIV at the height of the AIDS crisis, grappling with homophobia, police repression, anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes and a string of 17 murders of gay men.

The era mobilized LGBTQ+ Montrealers to protest when pink-haired queer activist Joe Rose was stabbed to death by four teens aboard an STM bus on March 19, 1989. They resisted the violent Montreal police raid on the queer Sex Garage loft party in the early morning hours of July 15, 1990, which sparked 36 hours of clashes between the LGBTQ+ community and the SPVM.

The Rose murder and Sex Garage — widely considered to be Montreal’s Stonewall, the 1969 New York City riots that marked a turning point for the LGBTQ+ rights movement worldwide — are at the core of Corps fa

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